The SMART Recovery Program stands for Self Management Addiction Recovery Therapy and it differs in its beliefs compared to another program called Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The SMART Recovery program bases its beliefs on scientific research and includes self-empowering help groups and techniques instead of the religious, faith based system of AA.  Many clients we see have reservations about joining a therapy group but once they are done with their Ibogaine Treatment, they find it helpful to be surrounded by others that understand what they are going through and we’ve found the SMART Recovery Program to be very helpful.

If you are afflicted with addiction or have addictive behaviors, you probably need some support in your addiction recovery. Drug addiction, opiate addiction, substance abuse, gambling, sexual addiction, cocaine addiction or any other problem addictions to other substances or activities need derailing before it becomes too late.

The SMART Recovery program differs from Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and other 12-step programs because it is not a fixed set of beliefs but rather works on rational analysis and action. This program considers that not all addicts are considered alike and it’s believed that there’s not one solution for everyone.

Individuals are encouraged to recover from addiction and alcohol abuse so they can live satisfying lives as where AA suggests that individuals during meetings, introduce themselves as addicts with the theory that you are ALWAYS in recovery. This would mean you never recover!

AA uses spiritual beliefs as an essential core to their philosophy and the SMART program works on the core of why substance abuse, addiction, alcoholism and drug dependency as behaviors that have possible physiological factors. If addiction were a mental disorder like claims have been made, then why would we be praying that away? Praying to a higher power everyday to get sober doesn’t seem like a convincing solution.

With SMART Recovery providing help in the form of meetings that are educational, supportive, including open discussions and teaching techniques for self-directed change, the group acts as a self-help group and not a support group.

AA acts as a support group with limited resources to make changes. SMART Recovery helps individuals in supporting or strengthening their own efforts to be free of addiction. They hold face-to-face meetings and daily online meetings where they emphasize personal choice and responsibility for one’s actions without viewing addiction as a life long affliction like AA.

There are different fundamental values in different recovery programs. The SMART Recovery program differs from Alcoholics Anonymous in that it takes a scientific approach to reasons behind why one might have an addiction as where AA acknowledges the addiction and uses a spiritual-based model to comprehend it.

For more information contact the SMART Recovery people.

SMART Recovery

 

 

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